


I'll crawl home

by SafelyCapricious



Series: things you find in a graveyard [10]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fractured Fairy Tale, Past Brainwashing, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 21:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20982908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: Jemma doesn't know what she's expecting, when she comes back from HYDRA. To feel different maybe. Safe again. At home.She doesn't.She feels unsettled and out of place and raw.





	I'll crawl home

**Author's Note:**

> Title generated by the [Hozier random fanfic title generator](http://www.generatorland.com/usergenerator.aspx?id=22501), bless them.
> 
> Fictober continues. I'm not sure if it's continuing out of stubbornness, spite, or something else, so I dunno if it's gonna keep going longer. 
> 
> Also, we all loving just how _well_ all these prompts work? <strike> I have no idea what I'm doing</strike>

** _Once upon a time there was a little girl_. **

Jemma doesn't know what she's expecting, when she comes back from HYDRA. To feel different maybe. Safe again. At home.

She doesn't.

She feels unsettled and out of place and _raw_. 

Things with Fitz are still not very good -- he still stutters worse when she's around, can’t meet her eyes – she feels like she’s hurting him just by being in the room with him. The others say they've forgiven her for leaving, now that they know why she did, but she's still separate from them. Apart and different. 

Some of the agents, ones she's never met and who are bound to have felt the sting of her betrayal even when it wasn't, joke about brainwashing and she decides against trying to make any new friends there.

It's surprising how much it doesn't hurt. 

She doesn't fit in. But she didn't fit in at HYDRA either. She's used to that now. 

So instead she finds ways to occupy her time, trying to stay useful when she can and when she can't mostly working on her science and testing new ideas (or at least outlining them, since funding for her projects is not what it was even at HYDRA). When she gets kicked out of the lab, which happens less often then it probably should, she takes to grabbing a book and curling up in her bunk with some herbal tea and just reading until she's exhausted enough to sleep without dreams.

That's when she finds the book. 

It's a book of children's stories, but not the usual ones, and it takes a while for her to realize why it's so familiar. She used to have this book — maybe a different copy or edition or version — but the same stories. It has, she remembers fuzzily as she looks at the cover, her favorite fairy tale in it. She stares at the bright green cover of the book and tries to remember what the fairy tale is. The protagonist is a girl, she thinks, the antagonist too and… She can't remember more. She frowns and thumbs open the book and somehow, somehow, flips right to the page that holds her favorite story and — 

She's a cup that's been emptied. She's a cup that she emptied and as she reads the words vibrate in her head and she remembers. 

She remembers sitting at her mother’s side in a brightly lit kitchen, hearing the stories and listening to the pictures and asking her over and over again to read this one again and again and again – 

It was her favorite. 

She goes to sleep smiling for the first time in a long time.

** _Once upon a time there was a boy who had wandered very far from home._ **

Forcing his thumb out of joint is never pleasant, but considering the other harm he’s done to himself recently just for a chance to get out of that fucking cell it’s well worth it. 

What follows is ten minutes of chaos that has his adrenaline pumping and his mind calm. He had been somewhat worried that he’d lost his touch, locked up as he was, and while the federal agents aren’t on the high end of the skill rating they aren’t the very bottom, either. 

He cracks his neck as he steps around the downed prison transport – they’re on a country road, small and winding and in the middle of nowhere. 

There’s a blue Honda parked and waiting off the shoulder. 

Grant steps back behind the transport, grabbing one of the guns off the bodies he’s left. They’re all bulky things, hard to hide and not what he wants to be seen carrying, but beggars and choosing and all that.

He assumes it’s some civilian that he’s going to have to take care of, they’ve seen too much – plus it’s convenient for him. Maybe he won’t kill them, but he’ll be taking their car, it’s a lot less conspicuous than the government cars full of bodies after all.

When he gets closer, however, he sees Simmons sitting behind the wheel. She’s not looking at him, instead she’s reading something. He checks his surroundings, but there’s no sign of anyone else and, huh. 

He checks the trunk and the backseat before rounding to the driver’s side. She’s got her finger in place of a bookmark and she meets his gaze levelly through the window, which she rolls down. 

“Are you done?” she asks, frowning slightly, when he takes a step back and aims his gun at the car. 

“Get out of the car, Simmons.” 

** _Once upon a time there was an evil witch._ **

She arches an eyebrow at him and looks very unimpressed, “No.” 

“Simmons,” he says, needlessly cocking the gun.

“Wa-ard,” she mocks back, and then rolls her eyes again before starting the car, “just get in and tell me where we’re going – now that Garrett is dead, are you Whitehall’s man or Malick’s?” She tilts her head and smiles mean. “Or maybe one of the European heads – there are so many, it’s hard to keep track isn’t it?” 

“Okay,” he says, “new question, who are you and what have you done with Simmons?” 

“Grant,” she says in that no-nonsense voice she used to use when acting as a medic, “just get in the damn car.” 

He lets the gun rest against his shoulder as he considers her. She’s starting to get a furrow between her eyes like he’s a problem she can’t figure out the answer to. “Give me one good—“

She rolls her eyes at him, seeming almost insultingly confident that he's not going to shoot her. “Hail Hydra,” she says in a dry voice.

He snorts. “Bullshit.”

That, at least, gets more of a reaction out of her than anything else as she sneers at him and jerks her head towards the carnage behind him. “Damnit, Ward, they are going to figure out something went wrong when you don't get delivered to your brother and we both need to be well away from here before –“ He gets in the car. She's not sure what part of her rant convinced him, or if he's working on a different play, but either way she's relieved and she lets out a breath. “Thank you. Now, where am I going?”

He watches her consideringly for a moment before shrugging, “Take a left out of here.”

She rolls her eyes again, but turns the car on and starts driving. Specialists are so paranoid.

** _Once upon a time there was a curse. _ **

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so for real, if you ship biospecialist then come talk to me [on tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites), but keep in mind I haven't watched the last...I don't know what season we're on -- I haven't watched since they got transported into space! I have no regrets about that, either. 
> 
> This might get a second part. It probably should. It's just a matter of if it _will_
> 
> Not edited nearly enough, hope you enjoyed anyways!


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